Allow me to thank you all for your continued interest in FINAL FANTASY XIV.

One year has passed since the gameís release, and despite the disappointment surrounding its launch, we have received a wealth of support from you, the players. Your encouraging words and continued loyalty have been a source of immeasurable inspiration to everyone involved with FINAL FANTASY XIVís development.

In the ten months since the FINAL FANTASY XIV teamís restructuring, we have put forth the utmost effort into not only improving the gameís existing features, but also creating a concrete plan to outline the gameís new direction. Today, I am pleased to announce we can confidently present that plan to our customers. We fully realize this is but a single step towards our ultimate goal, and that to meet the high standards set in the plan, more time is required. In the meantime, however, we will not waver in our commitment to bringing players exciting and engaging content, even as the game moves through its evolution.

With this, it is my hope that we will continue to receive your support as we will need to bring the unbilled period to a close between late November and early December 2011, and introduce our subscription-based billing system. I appreciate that this decision will not be popular, but it is a necessary step in building upon the foundation our fans and development team have made together and to realize the full potential of FINAL FANTASY XIV.

The team will stop short of nothing as they move towards realizing the new FINAL FANTASY XIV, and as they do so, I humbly ask for both your understanding and support.

From what it sounds like is that you are going to be paying to continue to play/test the game while they develop a brand new game. So they don't really care about whether or not you enjoy it as they have to completely remake the game from the ground up anyways so they might as well get some money from the people that want to pay to test.

This makes sense to me as the only other option they really have is to suck up the continued operating cost losses along with new development costs or take the servers down until the v2.0 release.

If I was super into playing this game and a big fan of the series (I'm close, but don't really have much time for MMOs of late) this wouldn't be that bad of a deal as long as I was fully aware that I was spending my money to play a Gamma Test.

Kythlyn wrote on Oct 14, 2011, 11:09:They really went about this announcement the wrong way. This was basically like saying, "Hey guys, we know we messed up and we know we're still fixing the problems, but start paying us now anyway."

What they needed to do was really get the game to a point where it could be called a great game. THEN do a massive relaunch campaign where players would be offered another free month of this 2.0 version of the game.

The way things are, they are going to lose a lot of players and I don't see any motive for new players to come on board.

The funny thing is that they originally said they would fix the game, then charge a sub. Now they are saying they need a sub to fix the game. I wouldn't support them at all even if I wanted to play the game, which I don't.

Yep. Sad thing is after looking at the reaction to this news on the FFXIV fansites the fanboys are lapping this shit up, ready to fund yet another Square failure. They fooled me once with the release of this game, they told me it was just a beta and it was all getting fixed in a 20gb retail client. Bait and switch, not falling for it again.

Kythlyn wrote on Oct 14, 2011, 11:09:They really went about this announcement the wrong way. This was basically like saying, "Hey guys, we know we messed up and we know we're still fixing the problems, but start paying us now anyway."

What they needed to do was really get the game to a point where it could be called a great game. THEN do a massive relaunch campaign where players would be offered another free month of this 2.0 version of the game.

The way things are, they are going to lose a lot of players and I don't see any motive for new players to come on board.

The funny thing is that they originally said they would fix the game, then charge a sub. Now they are saying they need a sub to fix the game. I wouldn't support them at all even if I wanted to play the game, which I don't.

I was looking through the PDF documents at the bottom of the link and their design looks like it could be pretty awesome. I played XI for several years when it was big, and I loved it, but I never played XIV. Several friends and a few relatives played XIV and weren't impressed, but these changes they're proposing, along with basically using the current XI team, might be enough to pull me in. If they just would've made XIV just like XI, more people, or at least the XI fans, would've been happy. They tried to do too much too differently and it really backfired on them.

Ozmodan wrote on Oct 14, 2011, 13:37:Well they consider it playable now, after a year. Many of the friends that had looked forward to this game are still playing XI and have really no intention of moving back to this game, especially with a sub.

Everyone I know IRL was going to wait for the PS3 release as they don't have PC's that can even remotely run the game (wanted to stay on PC as they all play FFXI on PC).

The shitstorm after release and my words of how god damned pathetic the beta was (i was in on the very first invite batches, saw the horrors from day one) pushed them away to a point I don't think they will ever play at this point.

I still say after the complete fuckup that was FFXIV's release they should have gutted XIV and used its engine for a XI upgrade. XI, a game that is still doing ok (tho it is dropping off).

Well they consider it playable now, after a year. Many of the friends that had looked forward to this game are still playing XI and have really no intention of moving back to this game, especially with a sub.

Ill give it about 2 months before it goes back to free. I think they would actually have a better chance at telling everyone its going to be like 4.99 a month if they are going to charge anything. Make enough to pay your overhead and like a previous poster said make it great then relaunch.

Kythlyn wrote on Oct 14, 2011, 11:09:They really went about this announcement the wrong way. This was basically like saying, "Hey guys, we know we messed up and we know we're still fixing the problems, but start paying us now anyway."

What they needed to do was really get the game to a point where it could be called a great game. THEN do a massive relaunch campaign where players would be offered another free month of this 2.0 version of the game.

The way things are, they are going to lose a lot of players and I don't see any motive for new players to come on board.

True, plus the timing is terrible. I mean, seriously, they are going to start charging people one month before SWTOR is released? Good luck with that SE.

They really went about this announcement the wrong way. This was basically like saying, "Hey guys, we know we messed up and we know we're still fixing the problems, but start paying us now anyway."

What they needed to do was really get the game to a point where it could be called a great game. THEN do a massive relaunch campaign where players would be offered another free month of this 2.0 version of the game.

The way things are, they are going to lose a lot of players and I don't see any motive for new players to come on board.

They'll still make some bank on the FF name alone but you're right, the launch basically doomed the games long term financial potential. There are way too many quality games that you can play for free, zero reason to pay for this.

I wonder how many players they're going to lose when that sub hits. There's quite a few quality MMOs that are either free or sub-based, that don't suffer from the complete suckage of FFXIV. Plus with SWTOR coming out and then GW2 around the corner... Tough to compete with such a horrible launch.

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